The Manics Are In Town? Call An Ambulance! - Independent.ie, 25th September 2010

Welsh rock band The Manic Street Preachers were among the acts playing Dublin on Thursday as part of the Arthur's Day celebrations.

Sponsors Guinness paid them a little more than the £150 the Manics received in 1991, when they played their first gig in the capital at Charlie's Bar, on Aungier Street.

Singer James Dean Bradfield recalled how the show resulted in bassist Nicky Wire being hospitalised.

"Nicky was wearing eye-liner and a feather boa. Half the audience were buying into it; the rest wanted to kill him. I just remember the stage kept getting invaded and at some point Nicky jumped in the air and landed on somebody. That's how he broke his leg."

An hour or so later, the Manics en-masse, were sat in the A&E Department of the Adelaide Hospital.

"It was a Friday night and there we were in this line of drunk people waiting to be seen. Us in our eye-liner and rock'n'roll clothes but not looking very rock and roll," laughed James.

On this latest trip to Dublin, James was hoping he might have bumped into sometime resident, Mike Scott of The Waterboys

"I wrote a fan letter to Mike when I was a kid and heard nothing back until last year when I was coming back on a flight from Serbia and realised Mike Scott was standing over me on the plane. He said 'I read your letter' and could quote parts of it back to me. Weird, as I was 15 then and I'm 41 now," Bradfield said.